Academic Background

Undergraduate Teaching

Political Sociology; Prelims Politics; Quantitative Methods in Politics and Sociology.

Postgraduate Teaching

Comparative Government; Statistical Methods for Social Sciences; Applied Statistics for Political Scientists.

Research Interests

I work primarily in the fields of public opinion and electoral behaviour. My main research focuses on two themes. First, I’m trying to explain the circumstances in which voters blame some governments for policy failures, but are willing to absolve other governments of responsibility for exactly the same problems. I published a book, with Sara Hobolt (LSE), that examines these questions at the EU level called Blaming Europe: Responsibility without accountability in the European Union. Second, I’m trying to explain the changing nature of class politics in Britain and have recently published, with Geoff Evans (Oxford), The New Politics of Class: The political exclusion of the British working class. This documents how changes to the political parties over the last 60 years have depressed class voting and increased working class abstention.

I am also interested in the Northern Irish political system, and am one of the directors of the 2016 Northern Irish Assembly Election Study. Finally, I continue to dabble in research focusing on both religious voting and generational changes in socio-political attitudes.